What We’re Reading – July 3rd

I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track is a fun book with great illustrations. It is, however, a bit of a tongue-twister to read. Take a journey with Switchman Jack as he works very hard to protect the ant who is walking the wrong way on the railroad tracks, tickety-tack! This is definitely a good read-aloud book, just make sure that you limber up your tongue and have a glass of water nearby. If you enjoy this book, there’s also another by the same author called I Saw an Ant in the Parking Lot. You can also download a .pdf file of fun activities and an ant coloring page that go along with the “Parking Lot” book here.

Tornado Boy has been struggling a bit with the concept of greater than and less than with numbers lately. We read More or Less to help him to better understand how numbers relate to one another. More or Less tells the story of a school carnival and its dunking booth. Eddie asks questions to guess people’s ages. If he fails, he gets dunked. Tornado Boy and I have used the techniques in the book (minus the dunking) to play the “guess my number” game. It’s definitely helping him to remember the order of numbers. There’s a cute song here and some ideas about using a chomping alligator to help teach the greater than and less than signs.

I ordered Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy through the library last week when I was looking for books about friendship. This one is really good and will appeal to both boys and girls. Tornado Boy was a bit concerned with the kids were working through what they were going to play together – “They don’t look like friends” he said. The negotiating that the children go through is a good lesson in listening to what other people want to do, too. The kids in the book have a great imagination and I’m curious if the rest of the Ladybug Girl girl series willl appeal to TB.

Duck for President is by the same woman – Doreen Cronin who wrote Click, Clack, Moo. This book was a little bit of a stretch for our patriotic theme, but it does take a look at voting to elect leadership. This book follows Ducks adventures – first he runs against Farmer Brown to run the farm, and then he sets his sites on his state and then our country. This book is a cute intro to our election process.

You can find out what other preschoolers are reading this week over at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.